Tales of a post-Apocalyptic Sorcerer
by Yakosh
Summary: A story about a sorcerer trapped in Elder Tales, exactly as the name suggests. T for possible swearing in the future. Possible pairings: [Akatsuki, Shiroe], [Mariel, Naotsugu], [OC, OC], [Rudy, Isuzu]. [On Hiatus]
1. Chapter 1

**I just can't make up my mind on what I want to write, can I? I write a couple chapters of this, a couple chapters of that, a couple chapters of something else. And then drop all the stories...**

 **Apologies for the short segments, but that is kinda how the anime starts off.**

 **Underlined means latin.**

* * *

 **(Mitsu)**

Huh? What's going on? I'm supposed to be sitting in front of my computer waiting for the new expansion to launch, not laying on some moss who knows where. And what's with my clothes? These are definitely not what I was wearing.

I stand up and look around, the sight looks familiar and yet entirely new at the same time. Like I had only seen an half decent image of this place before.

This lake is really beautiful. And that giant tree, it's very familiar.

Is this Elder Tales...? What the hell?

I start walking and immediately trip over a branch. That was embarrassing. I look up and a menu opens in front of me, health bars appearing next to the people, marking them as People of the Land. I try tapping the button marking my magic bag and it opens a list of items in my inventory. Ah, there it is, the log out button.

I tap the button and a red Ø symbol appears with a 'failed' sound.

The menu shows my level, 95, which I was able to have already because I was one of the people who tested the expansion pack, so I suppose they pushed it to my main character before whatever brought us here an instant after the release of the new expansion, this meant I was likely the highest level player at the moment, at least on Yamato since I was the highest during the testing phase.

I look at the 'island' in the middle of the relatively small lake, which wasn't really an island since a thin bridge of land connected it. On the island grew a large tree and two players were talking. Both familiar players. The HUD marked them as 'Adventurers,' which was what players were referred to as by the game until now. The two players were both members of the former Debauchery Tea Party and one of them I had done some mercenary jobs with a few months ago.

One of the two players was a half-alv enchanter by the name Shiroe, and the player who I had played with a few months ago, the other was a human guardian by the name of Naotsugu who had quit the game for past a little over two years thanks to work reasons.

Before I follow/meet them I should either figure out how to close the menu our get it out of my face, because I can't see where I'm going like this.

I tap one of the buttons and try to drag it—which was somewhat awkward since I needed to be careful to not push my finger through the button, since it offered no resistance.

It once I drag it to the side the whole menu vanishes, except for the HUD.

I try to tap on my HP/MP bar and it opens into my player card with two opens, collapse and close. The card reads:

 **Name: Mitsu  
Guild: _N/A_**

 **5623/5623 HP  
** **39045/39045 MP**

 **Race: Race of Ritual  
Skin (Unique): Cat-girl  
** **Class: Sorcerer  
Level: 95**

That's my character alright... one of the very few with this race, thank the stupid low HP, I'm a complete glass cannon, with less than half the HP of a half-alv of the same level, the second lowest HP race.

The race makes up for it to a certain extent with its extreme MP capacity, at more than double base MP of a half-alv of the same level.

Well, the menu in its current state is good enough.

I see that the pair had started walking and start to follow them. Though the cat skin I have was supposed to be purely cosmetic as a reward for being the strongest at the end of testing, it seemed to be improving my hearing and eyesight, since I could see and hear considerably better than in the real world, where I had perfectly good hearing and eyesight and I had no stated buffs to either from anything.

It also seemed to make me a bit more agile and make less noise when walking, though the former of the latter group wasn't that big a difference, the quiet walking combined with improved hearing was perfect in the situation where I was discreetly following someone, especially since sorcerer wasn't the assassin class. Then again, in terms of damage output it was the magic equivalent, a complete glass cannon with high burst damage.

I see Shiroe stumbling every now and then and am suddenly thankful that I made my character basically an exact copy of my real self, at least as close as I could get. Aside from the cat ears and runes on, well, pretty much my whole body except face.

White hair, white skin, red eyes + cat ears and runes on the backs of my hands.

* * *

"Thank you very much," says the assassin by the name of Akatsuki, who turned out to be a girl who was like a 12 year old or so in height.

She had gotten a appearance changing potion from Shiroe.

It was now night and a group of Shiroe, Naotsugu and the assassin named Akatsuki—who still hadn't noticed me—were camping out.

The food that I had eaten earlier today was totally terrible and tasted like burnt soggy crackers without salt, and they seemed to have reached the same conclusion, so until I was passing out from hunger, eating was a no-go. Actually, come to think of it, fruits and spices still had flavor, so I could just eat those as much as possible. I could put salt on the stuff that tastes like burnt soggy crackers without salt and make it into burnt soggy crackers.

* * *

The next day the little group of 3 visited a guild called Crescent Moon Alliance, whose leader was apparently Shiroe's friend and while I waited I entertained myself by killing flies with precision spells. Or trying, hitting things was pretty hard when actually controlling the body. Instead of a crosshair to aim my spells with I needed to either aim with my hand or just imagine the projectiles direction. Neither of which were all that easy.

"Frost, Pulse Beam, Weak, Accuracy," I chant and channel MP into my hand.

A frosty glow appears in my hand and tries to break free, I aim at a fly sitting on the wall of the guild building and let the projectile go, thanks to the parameters of the spell and the amount of mana I pumped into it, the time it took for it to reach the fly was a minuscule fraction of a second and it left a frosty blue line connecting the former location of my hand and the former location of the fly, which faded within a second or so. I had actually managed to hit the fly this time.

I was very close to it, so not that impressive, but still.

Just as I'm about to cast another spell the door to the guild building opens and they walk out. I cancel the spell, instinctively salvaging some of the mana and follow them.

They eat some food and Shiroe suggests that they figure out the fighting. It might be more difficult for them than it was for me, since I already used voice chants for spells for great versatility, so it was just the different aiming I needed to get used to.

* * *

At night they head to Archive Tower Forest, it was a low level open-air dungeon, which, being a dungeon had the property that monsters would attack you, regardless of level. In most situations, monsters at level 25-30 which they would be here wouldn't bother attacking a level 90 party, but here they could train on monsters that couldn't practically kill them.

As Shiroe explains this to his party members a group of level 28 Briar Weasels show up on the path in front of them. They look pretty much like normal weasels, except they have a slightly thorny vine around their tail in a scorpion like shape and they had red eyes. If I recall correctly they shot red blasts with their vines, which would extend upwards and glow green when they were ready to shoot.

As the weasels charged Naotsugu says, "Piece of cake!" And raises his shield.

Judging by how his eyes are moving, he's trying to activate skills through his menu.

* * *

"Assassination!" yells the little assassin as she spins through the air and slashes the carnivorous flower enemy in half. The girl had declared herself 'Lord Shiroe's Ninja,' and seemed to be trying her very hardest to protect him.

"How did you do that?" Shiroe asks.

"I don't know, my body just moved on its own," she answers.

"Naotsugu! Don't use commands just feel the motion!" Shiroe yells to the guardian.

"What?" asks Naotsugu.

"Just do it!" Shiroe yells back.

"Alright," says the guardian and puts his shield to the side.

"Shield swing!" he calls out and his shield glows green, swinging to side at inhuman speed and killing the three weasels that had been charging him.

"Fire, Pulse Beam, Weak, Balanced," I chant quietly and channeled mana to my hand, a ball of fire appearing in my hand and seemingly trying to break free.

I aimed at the last weasel and let the bolt loose. Almost instantly a line of fire pierced through the weasel, killing it. Then the fire faded and Shiroe called out, "Who are you!"

"Long time no see, what has it been, 2? 3 months?" I ask, walking out.

"Oh, it's just you," he says, breathing a sigh of relief.

"My Lord, do you know her?" Akatsuki asks.

"She was a member of the Tea Party and probably the strongest Sorcerer I know. Given her particular skill set, it's quite possible she would be able to easily decimate all 3 of us in a fight because we still can't really fight with our own bodies," Shiroe says.

"You give me too much credit, I've been in this world just as long as you have," I say.

"True, but the way you fought even before then was always appropriate for here," he answers.

"Anyway, I'm Mitsu, and I already know who you are," I introduce myself to Akatsuki, seeing as Naotsugu and Shiroe I had already known before.

"I would ask where you've been the past few months, but given your unique style and current level, I'd guess you got to test the expansion?" he asks.

"Correct," I say.

"Managed to level 5 times in 3 months, though I did play like 10 hours a day, for whatever reason, they paid me to do it," I say.

"I've been following you basically from the start, so no point in telling me what you've been up to," I say.

"Huh!?" Akatsuki asks in surprise.

"I was able to follow at a considerable distance thanks to the cat skin that was supposed to be cosmetic, but now is having the effects of increasing my sight and hearing, as well as making it easier to walk quietly," I say.

* * *

"So we're heading to Susukino to rescue this Serara girl, who's a member of the Crescent Moon Alliance?" I clarify.

"Were you even paying attention?" Shiroe asks.

"Not really," I answer truthfully.

"You can memorize learn half a dead language to get better at a game but paying attention you just can't manage?" Shiroe asks.

"Hey! I can normally focus just fine, I don't know what's up with me, I just feel like curling up into a ball and taking a nap," I say.

Then go ahead and do that, we're leaving tomorrow," Shiroe says.

I run over to a large nearby tree and climb into it. I think this cat thing is getting to my head... But it was comfortable here, the moss was soft and warm and there was enough room in the split to curl up into a ball.

I close my eyes and immediately fall asleep. Why was I so sleepy? Oh right, I don't think I've slept since we got here... and a night before that.

While they were sleeping I experimented with spells, so that's why I'm so sleepy. I'm an idiot.

* * *

Birds chirping is such a nice sound to wake up to.

I try to roll over and... roll out of the tree I forgot I was sleeping in, crashing to the ground.

"Ow ow ow," I mutter as I stand up.

"You certainly slept late," Shiroe says.

"Not like I missed much by not eating breakfast," I say, "Let's go."

"Alright, you have a horse summon flute, right?" Shiroe asks everyone.

We all nod and I take it out of my bag. It's easier to just reach into the bag that's way bigger inside than out and say the name of the item than going through the menu a lot of the time.

We all blow our flutes at the same time and 4 horses run up from nowhere.

We jump on and thankfully our bodies already know how to ride these, because I certainly don't.

* * *

We arrive at a nice clearing and I ask, "Oy, Shiroe, don't you think this is far enough?"

"I suppose you're right, besides, the horses need to rest before we can ride them anymore," Shiroe says.

"Far enough for what?" Akatsuki asks curiously.

"You'll see," I say, reaching my hand into my bag and quietly saying, "Gryphon summon flute."

I feel the flute appear in my hand and I pull my hand out of the bag.

Shiroe and Naotsugu had both done the same and we all blew the flutes.

A moment later 3 gryphons swooped down, causing a great deal of surprise in Akatsuki, who was totally adorable.

"Shiroe, your ninja is adorable," I say quietly.

I mount my gryphon as it lands, along with Naotsugu and Shiroe.

"Those flutes are form the Hades' Breath raid..." Akatsuki mutters.

"Get on," Shiroe says to Akatsuki, holding out a hand. Akatsuki responds by turning red to the ears but then reluctantly grabbing his hand and climbing into the saddle.

"I'll go first!" Naotsugu yells and takes off.

I urge my gryphon to take off and with a few flaps of its mighty, majestic wings we're in the air.

Soon Shiroe and Akatsuki join us.

* * *

A few hours later we reach a mountain, which because of swarms of level 90+ wyverns we couldn't fly around and so we needed to go through the mountain, through the Depths of Palm.

We land and dismount our gryphons.

I wonder if raw meat is an ingredient, because then technically it should have taste... the cat is definitely getting to my head.

"I've been here many times in the game, but in person it's so huge," Shiroe says quietly.

"Yeah," I say and nod in agreement. Naotsugu and Akatsuki also nod.

We walk into the giant tunnel, which opens into an enormous cavern that has various bridges and such.

* * *

"Wait does that mean you're 7 years older than me!?" I ask Akatsuki in surprise.

* * *

"Ehh? Where's the light at the end of the tunnel. Did you copy your maps wrong?" I ask Shrioe.

"No, I'm certain this is the right place, besides, you're the one who got to do testing for the expansion, shouldn't you have known about this?" Shiroe says.

"It wasn't here, I guess they didn't want to spoil everything," I say.

"My Lord, above us," Akatsuki says before Shiroe can answer.

A giant rat man about 10 times—if not more—my height dropped down in front of us. As ominous as it looked, it was still only level 68 and had no specific name, so it wasn't going to be that hard to kill. Its rank was party, so that's good, if it was raid then we might have been in trouble, though probably not.

"Looks like we have no choice, let's eliminate it," Shiroe says.

"Split up, Akatsuki, attack from behind, Naotsugu draw its attacks, Mitsu, stay away from it and barrage it with magic attacks," Shiroe orders.

"""Right!""" we all say at the same time.

"Anchor Howl!" Naotsugu yells.

It's a rat man so it will be weak to fire and light and resistant to earth and darkness, should have about no defense or weakness against wind and water/frost.

"Cleansing Dragon's Flame!" I say. An orb of fire, much lighter in color than normal fire appears around my hand. Cleansing is a prefix you can add to many elemental spells, considerably increasing MP usage and damage as well as adding a second damage type, it works with any fire, wind, water, or earth spell. In this case the spell itself is a continuous gust of fire with an approximately 5°—maybe a little less—spread. Well not exactly continuous, one cast of the spell allows you to pause and release the breath for a maximum amount of time spent firing, which slowly gets used up just waiting as well.

In this case, however, I just burn it continuously for the full 10 seconds that the spell lasts.

"Cross Slash!" Naotsugu yells the moment the fire wears off.

"Thorn Bind Hostage!" Shiroe yells, binding the rat in giant thorny vines.

Akatsuki leaps into the air behind it and as she is about to slash it Shiroe points his staff at her and says, "Keen Edge!"

"Assassinate!" Akatsuki says with a spin, a red line appearing across the whole height of the creature, severing all 5 thorns and finishing the creature.

"That was fun, let's hurry and get to Susukino," I say.

As we walk out of the cave we are greeted by a beautiful sunset.

"Wow! It's so beautiful!" I say.

* * *

We land in the snowy mountains a few kilometers out from Susukino.

"So we walk in, we take the girl, we walk out, we kill Brigandia, we go back?" I ask.

"Well, approximately," Shiroe answers.

* * *

And here we were, surrounded by a good fraction of Brigandia.

"Be careful of the sorcerer girl, her race is the Race of Ritual so her attacks will be strong," Londark says.

"So which one of you is Demi-sauce?" Shiroe taunts.

"Now, now, Shiroe-chi, it's rude to ask so loudly, it's obviously the way to big man over there, isn't that right, Demikas?" the swashbuckler werecat, Nyanta, purrs.

Basically, Shiroe challenges Demikas to fight Nyanta one on one, then when Demikas refuses he taunts him more by saying how Londark would be a better opponent until he finally agrees.

The monk charges at the swashbuckler, who avoids, striking with his rapiers at the monk.

They continue to jump around each other, the swashbuckler not landing any good hits, and down to about 30% HP.

That didn't mean the monk, who was at nearly full, was winning though, as swashbucklers had any number of debuffs they could inflict through their weapons, even without clean hits, so it wouldn't be long before Nyanta squashed this bumbling fool.

Of course, Demi-sauce would cheat before then, Brigandia was never known for playing fair. He would have his healers heal him before he dies and then have his whole group jump the swashbuckler, then Naotsugu would enter the fray and use Anchor Howl to force everyone but Demi-sauce to target him.

Then Nyanta would let Demi-sauce think he was winning and then combined with thorn bind hostage from Shiroe he should be able to easily kill him. My job is just to kill the healers if necessary, though I wouldn't mind dueling with the elf mage, something's off about him and I'd rather he be busy fighting me.

He seems to understand vaguely what's going on.

Oh there it goes.

Nyanta dashes past the monk, striking him repeatedly and quickly draining his HP down to about 20%.

"Enough of this playing around, healers!" the monk orders.

The 4 healers behind Londark cast spells and blue light surrounds Demi-sauce, quickly restoring his HP.

"Now, Serara," Shiroe says.

As he says Serara casts a druid healing spell called Heartbeat Healing... why would he do that? Seems kinda pointless, since she's only level 19. Whatever, if it's Shiroe's idea there's some good reason to it.

"Surround and kill him!" the Monk yells.

The people start to charge at Nyanta and Naotsugu runs out and yells, "Anchor Howl!"

A bright green light erupts from his body and Londark says, "Fine, kill him first!"

Naotsugu can last fine on his own, for a little while at least, and when the time is right, he can use Castle of Stone which combined with Anchor Howl will give Nyanta and Shiroe 10 free seconds.

"I can't do it, I can't heal them both," Serara says, panicking. If the problem had been just mana, Shiroe could have transferred some of my mana to her, since I have plenty to spare, but unfortunately, there was a limit to how much mana you could pump into something.

"Then focus on Nyanta," Shiroe says.

"But Naotsugu-san is in trouble too!" Serara says.

"Do what you can," Shiroe says.

Serara nods and focuses her healing on Nyanta.

The monk sends the swashbuckler flying and then smashes down on him. Nyanta's HP was down to just above 10%.

"Must be hard having just 1 weak healer," Demi-sauce says.

"Just out of curiosity, why do you want her that much?" I ask.

He ignores me.

Oh well.

"It's over for you, I'm sending you to the cathedral a hundred times!" Demi-sauce yells and charges at Nyanta.

Naotsugu's HP drops to the 'very low' zone and he calls out, "Castle of Stone!"

He looks like he turns into yellow, glowing stone and the next barrage of attacks fails to do damage.

"Thorn Bind Hostage!" Shiro calls out, raising his staff.

"You think a bind will stop me!?" the monk asks and strikes at the swashbuckler who approaches slowly.

"Got you!" he yells. The swashbuckler jumps into the air.

Demi-sauce's HP was currently at 11903, meaning that with just one set of thorns the Monk shouldn't die. However, the cooldown is only 15 seconds and 12 seconds had already gone by since he cast the spell.

The swashbuckler falls down and hits the monk 5 times just as Shiroe recasts the spell, he then jumps back at him and hits 4 more times.

A moment later a flash of blueish-purplish light surrounds the monk and when it fades one thorn vine remains. The monk's HP is down to 1.

"Healers! Heal him!" Londark yells creating a fireball in his hand, however, before they can, all 4 of them and Londark collapse. Behind them stands Akatsuki, who sheathes her sword.

"Damn you, enchanter!" Demi-sauce yells and activates one of his skills.

"Stop!" yells Serara and hits him with her wand... which under normal circumstances wouldn't do even 1 point of damage to the level 90 monk, but in this case, it counts as an attack, so it triggered the last thorn, doing 1000 damage.

"I won't forget you, Shiroe the Enchanter!" Demikas yells as he explodes into light.

"I wanted to fight Londark," I say with a slight pout.

"Let's go home," Shiroe says.

"Alright... can I kill something first?" I ask.

Shiroe sighs.

"I'll take that for a yes."

"Bring it, little girl," says one of the members.

"Alright, you'll do," I say.

He was a swashbuckler, which means he shouldn't have an particular elemental resistances, in fact, fairly low health as well.

"Immolate," I say and a sphere of fire appear in my hand, almost immediately after he is covered in fire. Given his level—only 76—he burnt to ashes before the spell wore off. I cancel the spell and say, "Boring," dragging it out.

"Seeing a 13 year old cheerfully burn someone to ash is somewhat scary," Naotsugu mutters.

"I wouldn't mind doing it to you as well, express travel to the cathedral in Akiba," I reply.

"You're as vicious as ever," Nyanta says in his 'purring' voice.

* * *

"I see you decided to become a cat too?" Nyanta says.

"It was supposed to be a purely cosmetic costume for participating in the test for the expansion, but I think it's getting to my head. I'm constantly thinking about taking naps and even wondered if raw meat would have taste in this world. Then again, the first one could be not having gotten any sleep a few days in a row and the second one just wanting to eat something with taste that wasn't a fruit."

* * *

Is that smell... food?

That's just wishful thinking. Or not, since apparently Naotsugu could also smell it, and Akatsuki and Shiroe.

We were sitting by the tents we had set up and immediately all got up, following the smell to find Nyanta and Serara cooking over the fire.

"It seems our hungry campers have found us," Nyanta purrs and hands us each a kabob.

"It doesn't matter if it has smell, it just means it will be even more disappointing when it turns out tasteless," Naotsugu says as we get ready to eat them.

We bite into them and then a fraction of a second later they're all gone.

"How did you do that?" asks Shiroe.

"You have to cook them with your own hands," Nyanta answers.

"We tried that, all we get is wet mush," Naotsugu says, grabbing one of the raw kabobs and putting it over the fire, causing it to isn't turn into purple drippy mush.

"The person must have a subclass of chef," Nyanta explains.

"Wait Chief, does that mean...?" Shiroe asks.

"Indeed, I am a level 90 chef!" Nyanta says.

"I just want more meat," I say quietly.

* * *

"So how long have you known each other?" Serara asks, referring to Shiroe and Nyanta.

"All 4 of us," Nyanta says, referring to Shiroe, Naotsugu, me and himself, "were members of the Debauchery Tea Party, with Shiroe and Mitsu going a little more than and less than a year before it was disbanded respectively. It disbanded 3 years ago, so about 4 years."

"So you were all in a guild together?" Serara asks.

"It wasn't really a guild, just a group of people, everyone was in different guilds, a few not being in any guilds," Naotsugu says.

"So that's how you all had the gryphon summon flutes," Akatsuki says quietly.

Then a bit later, "But you just lied to me, there's no way this pervert was in such a legendary group as the Debauchery Tea Party!" she says as she points to Naotsugu.

"I so was!" Naotsugu yells.

"I'm gonna go take a nap," I say and climb into a tree.

"You know we have tents," Naotsugu says.

"She probably just doesn't want to sleep anywhere near a pervert like you," Akatsuki says.

"I tried it the first time because I was too sleepy to find anywhere better and it turns out it can be comfortable if you find a good tree," I say down to them from my perch in the tree.

"You're definitely becoming a cat..." Naotsugu mutters.

"You're just jealous you're so big you wouldn't fit in a tree," I tease.

"You should try it Akatsuki," I add.

"Maybe some other time," Akatsuki says.

I close my eyes and go to sleep, for once actually not wanting to eat something with, ya know, taste.

* * *

 **How was that for a first chapter? Sorry to those of you who were hoping I would post one of my other stories, but write now I'm in a phase where I just write whatever a feel like... as a result I currently have 4 on-going story and one story I might want to bring back which I previously deleted.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter two: Prologue: Giant timeskip.**

 **Yeah, that's the whole prologue.**

* * *

 **(Mitsu)**

"Firestorm!" I call out and point my hand at another rock. Spheres of fire appear above the location and rain down on it, exploding into chunks.

"Cutting Winds!" I say, continuing my spell spam and shredding a tree with wind blades that fly forward.

"Icy Barrage!" Shards of ice appear floating and launch forward in a barrage.

"Metal Maelstrom!" An earth type spell with involves a literally **tornado of blades**.

Yes, I have a spell that shoots blades made of wind and a spell which makes winds out of blades, what about it?

"Semi-Auto Familiar, Sphere, Anchored, Fire and Light, Beam, Poweful," I chant and immediately a massive amount of mana is drained, about 9.5k. A sphere of fire appears in my hand. This type of familiar basically allows me to store some mana in the form of an attacking spell, but I can continue to supply the spell with mana to maintain it. Despite being a familiar it is a sorcerer spell and not summoner. Summoners generally summon familiars of some creature shape, not elemental spheres. The anchored basically means that while it can move rather quickly while close to me, it can't move more than a meter away from me.

I move extend my hand about 30° up and to the right, then let go of the familiar.

"Maintain relative position," I say. It is a stricter version of the follow command for autonomous familiars.

"Semi-Auto Familiar, Sphere, Anchored, Earth (Metal), Bolt, Fast, Fast, Medium," I chant, summoning another one. The earth one a floating ball of metal and rock with green cracks laced through it.

I move extend my hand about 30° down and to the right, then let go of the familiar.

"Maintain relative position," I say, once again anchoring.

I repeat the second spell for water (ice) familiar and first for air familiar, both on the left and have the 4 orbs floating next to me. At my level the maximum number—and probably at level 100 without the very best gear—of familiars I can have is 4, as the maximum you can have is your mana divided by 9.5k, and I doubt I could get to 48k mana for a fifth one. While afterwards you still regenerate mana, it is still the limit on how many you can summon. The reason I summon 4 different ones is simply so I don't have to deal with the cooldown of nearly a minute, while at the moment ideal would be a mixture of fire and light. The reason fire and light attacks of the same nominal damage as a just fire or just light attack do more damage against creatures equally weak to both is because if you have too much fire or too much light it 'exhausts' the weakness in a sense, meaning that if you split the damage over two weakness categories it does more damage. So I summon one with fire and light and then the rest plain elements, though I probably won't be using earth at all since these underground goblins are resistant to it.

The forest I am in right now is very close to a dungeon, so I should go there. In the original game the dungeon only allowed a maximum of 1 party in and it would scale the levels of all the monsters to the average level, which means that this should be by no means super easy. On the other hand, the dungeon isn't very difficult, so even though they are my level, they will still be fairly weak for creatures of that level, in other words, they are low class creatures.

The dungeon was mostly populated with low-class goblins of various sorts, with stats that matched closer to a level 85-90 goblin in normal conditions. Their strength was their numbers. There were a lot of them, thankfully, that is one of the things sorcerers were good at, AOE attacks.

I drink a mana potion and walk into the dungeon and see crowds of the goblins. The earth will be weakest and the fire will be strongest against them. Though the way I made the earth one, it is more like attacking them with swords or arrows rather than earth based spells.

"Activate 1," I say, another advantage of the familiars is that they allow me to basically prepare some spells, activating them with simple and quick commands.

The fire familiar which I first summoned glows brighter with a yellow flame and as I raise my hand.

A beam of fire erupts from the sphere towards the goblins and as I move my hand the beam turns.

The front row of goblins are all killed rather quickly. My visible mana didn't really take a hit because the familiar was running on batteries in a way, most of the 9.5k mana used to summon it can be used, only about 500 being lost in 'summoning' it. I should stop using summon, it is create. Unlike with summoners which summon existing creatures and if the creature dies, resummoning it takes a lot more mana, and sometimes something special needs to be done. Summoned creatures have HP, my creations only have mana, they aren't really familiars.

The beam of fire stops, the single 'cast' ran out and now it has a cooldown.

"Activate 2," I say, activating the earth one.

Green energy forms in front of the metallic sphere and launches forward in a bolt, turning into metal as it flies. It flies straight through a few goblins before hitting the wall and turning back into green energy and dissipating.

I release a barrage of such attacks, destroying the goblins closest to me.

As it too needs to 'rest' I say, "Activate 3."

The water familiar activates and shards of ice form from it, one after another, many at a time, launching forward.

The barrage of ice spikes held back the goblins, but they still advance. "Ice Barrier!" I say and a wall of ice is erected before me, blocking off the the tunnel.

"Seeing Eye!" I say and summon a small familiar available to all 6 magic classes that is good for just this, seeing around corners. You control a point of view and hearing that can move about 5 meters away from you.

I look over the wall and see where they are.

The ice barrage runs out and I say, "Activate 4."

Immediately a powerful gust of air shoots forward from the air familiar—a column of air with some wind spinning around it—and send the goblins flying back as the ice wall shatters due to its duration running out. This kinda of air spell wouldn't do much damage, but it held them back nicely.

"Fireball!" I say and a fireball appears in my hand. I shove the fireball into the column of wind and it turn yellow with flame and then creates an explosion, thanks to oversupply of oxygen. Normal fire would have extinguished the flame, but thanks to my mana supply that didn't happen so instead there was an explosion. The magic fades away and walk forward. No goblins around, looks like that got them all.

* * *

Phew, I cleared the whole dungeon on my own huh? It's not a very hard dungeon and most of my gear is phantasmal-class, but still.

Wait not quite, I forgot there was still, ya know, a boss.

Kulmorg the Goblin Shaman if I recall correctly.

A support type boss that summons lots of minions, giving them various buffs by playing on drums.

That's probably the easiest type for me to solo and the hardest for a melee build, since I can wipe out the summons while attacking the main boss, while a melee character needs to kill the summons to reach the boss. If I can solo a party boss, then I'll consider it impressive.

* * *

...or not, I guess. It kinda ignored me and was just worshipping something. Well that was disappointing.

It hadn't reacted when 'discharged' all 4 of my familiars right next to it, which is effectively casting more than 40k mana worth of spells right in its face.

Well, it lost more than half its HP, being a softy party boss, but it didn't fight back, so an empty mana bar later, it was dead.

And I gained a significant amount of XP.

Back when this was a game I would have brushed this off as some bug and would have seen if it was broken again when it respawned, if it was, I would farm the crap out of it. But now, it felt kinda bad, killing this creature which didn't fight back. I wouldn't compare it to killing a person, that's only kill one of the People, but more like just killing an injured animal, without the cuteness and helplessness of an injured animal that makes you want to help it. And they respawn. But still, something was off either way, since there wouldn't be 'bugs' in this world.

I'll worry about it later.

 _Ping_.

Oh, Shiroe's calling.

 _"Hey Shiroe, what's up?"_ I ask.

 _"Can you come to the Round Table Conference room?"_ he asks.

 _"Sure, I just finished up this dungeon,"_ I say.

"Call of Home!" I call out, a spell available to all Adventurers at level 1 once they pass the tutorial.

I appear at the gates of the cathedral and hurry over to the guild building.

 _"I'll be there in a moment,"_ I say and hang up.

It takes me about a minute to get to the room and I walk in a little out-of-breath.

* * *

"Wait so why am I coming? Akatsuki is more charming than I am anyway, and it's not like they can pose a threat to you so you don't need me for a 'just in case' situation," I say.

"Oh whatever, Shiroe, I need to call on your encyclopedic memory of game mechanics, I was fighting a boss earlier called Kulmorg the Goblin Shaman, and instead of fighting back he was just worshipping something, anything you know of cause that sort of thing?" I ask.

"Nothing I can think of off the top of my head," he says.

"Oh well," I say. We've been riding horses to get to Maihama—or more accurately, the Palace of Eternal Ice located very close to it—for nearly two hours now. 'We' as in Shiroe, Crusty, and Michitaka as official representatives of the Round Table and Akatsuki, Henrietta—who just came along to be able to force Akatsuki and I into various dresses—, an assistant of Michitaka's, Misa, and me.

The Round Table had been invited to a meeting of the lords of Eastal, and since nobody wanted to go they decided to pick Crusty as the natural leader and politician, Michitaka to represent the merchant guilds—through the elegant methods of rock, paper, scissors—and Shiroe because Crusty just wanted to make him suffer for some reason. And Shiroe brought me along for whatever reason, Akatsuki followed because she is Shiroe's ninja and refuses to leave his side and Henrietta is here to make sure that Akatsuki and I suffer too.

"Ah, there it is," I say, since I'm riding at the front so I see it first. A large castle covered in glistening ice in mid-summer.

"It's beautiful," Akatsuki says in wonder.

"Yeah, much more so than in the game."

We ride to the city gates and are welcomed.

The ball was in a few hours and until then I was free to laze around in a tree if I wanted to. I'm glad my mages gear looks passable, since I can use that as an excuse to avoid being shoved into some dress by Henrietta.

Actually, some nobles walk around through the park, so if I were to laze around in a tree there I might catch some important information without anyone really having grounds to be mad at me even if they find out.

I climb into a tree and close my eyes.

* * *

 _Ping_. Oh, Shiroe's calling.

 _"Oh hey Shiroe,"_ I say.

 _"Where are you?"_ he asks.

 _"Just taking a nap in a tree_ _somewhere,"_ I say with a yawn.

 _"All you do is take naps,"_ he says with a chuckle, _"Well anyway, the ball is starting and it would be rude to be late."_

 _"Do I even have to go, it's not like anyone expects a teenager to dance with nobles... or touch an adult stranger or whatever,"_ I say.

 _"Yes, yes you do,"_ Shiroe says.

 _"Sigh. Fine, coming,"_ I say and drop off the tree.

I head to the ballroom and spot where the whole group of Adventurers are standing, a little ways away from anyone else.

I walk through the corridor around the room and enter the ball room from the entrance nearest to them.

"Sorry I'm late," I say in an only slightly sarcastic tone.

"Why did we bring you along?" mutters Michitaka.

"I don't know, ask Shiroe," I say.

* * *

What time is it?

12:04pm, I really overslept. Why did I stay up late? I don't even remember. Oh right, Sage of Miral Lake.

I should try to figure out what this skill is... A skill with a name such as 'Angel' sounds scary. If it was something like 'Angel's Wrath' then it limit what it could be, it would probably be like a lightning strike or something. But a skill like that...

I make my way out of the castle and cross the bridge leading back the way we came. Okay, now what.

"Mitsu! I found you!" I hear Henrietta call as she comes running, a dress sticking out of his magic bag. Crap.

Not happening. I run to the edge of the bridge and jump off. While my HP is lower than hers, fall damage is a percentage based on your weight, and since I was lighter, I should be able to take a longer fall at least, that's how it was when it was a game and if worst comes to worst, I'll just respawn at the cathedral and have to ride back for a few hours, or fly on a gryphon for 15 minutes.

As I land I roll and see that I managed to lose all my HP save literally 5 points.

I stand up 'a little' shaky and take out a health potion, gulping it down, my HP recovering to full very quickly thanks to my small HP capacity. A human guardian level 35 or so should have more HP than me.

The castle was basically located in the middle of crater, on a small mountain. There's bound to be some hidden tunnels there, at least, if fantasy stories taught me anything, which they probably didn't. But there probably is a way up.

I walk to the edge of the mountain and see a small path leading up. I follow the path to the top and find that it simply connects to the bridge, thankfully Henrietta is gone.

* * *

 _"I've cleared out all the squads in this area,"_ I report to Mariel, the goblins here were pathetically low level, at levels 15-25, making them very easy for me to kill.

 _"Come support the us on the beach then,"_ she says.

 _"Alright, I'm on my way,"_ I say and start running there.

At level 96, even doing something like running a marathon would be easy.

Going at this pace, reaching the beach will take about 10 minutes, that shouldn't be enough time for anything to happen really.

* * *

There are a lot of sahuagin here. I think this calls for some large-scale AOE magic. I take out my staff—a simple black metal rod with a white crystal in the form of a stretched out octahedron at the top, held in place by four small pieces of metal going along the corners on the bottom half—and raise it in air.

"Storm Call!" I call out, a spell which gathers a bunch of storm clouds in the vicinity. On its own it doesn't do anything, except block out the sun, which can be nice or bad, but it preps for Icy Storm and Lightning Storm, the first of which rains sharp shards of ice and the second is pretty self explanatory... lots of lightning. It also uses a lot of mana, like 28k at my level a lot. It also preps for spells like Lightning Column which—including the prep—costs over 100k mana to cast, meaning that one player can't cast it, and it requires a party of high level players and at least one enchanter, or just a bunch of sorcerers, since the game has mechanics for 'group casting' spells, where a sorcerer can send their mana to a party member so they can cast a spell which costs more mana than their max mana capacity. I wasn't planning to do anything like that though, as that spell had relatively small AOE and I don't have anywhere to get the mana anyway.

The tip of my staff is surrounded by a blue aura and I point it into the sky, causing storm clouds to start to gather. The total cast time for this spell was well over 30 seconds.

This is one of the largest AOE spells I know of, with an effective radius of over 100 meters, with a duration of 10 minutes.

In Regan's magic scale system, it would be a tactical class magic. Thanks to the absolutely ridiculously high mana cost, I am one of the very few sorcerers cable of casting the prep spell. The follow-up spells take less mana, around 10k each.

Icy Storm is a water element attack, meaning that these fish-men will be fairly resistant to it, even if it is ice. So, the logical choice is Lightning Storm.

"Lightning Storm!" The tip if my staff is surrounded by a blueish purple aura with electricity crackling through it and lightning crackles in the clouds. Soon lightning bolts start striking all over the place. The way Lightning Storm works here, it won't even hit all the enemies, so if my goal is to kill a particular enemy—which it isn't—this is a terrible spell to use.

Well, I'll just sit and watch now, since my mana is so low if I used any more spells I'd probably knock myself out.

One of the fish runs up to me and I see its level. I guess their levels must seriously vary, or they would probably be dead right now, given that they've been fighting a level 90s for over an hour.

It was a pathetic level 20 and I impale it with the back end of my staff, which is rather sharp. I got the staff custom forged and decided it would be wise to make it pointy, since I'm using phantasmal class materials anyway. Granted, they were phantasmal class metals with high magic abilities, not strong, but just like any level 90 character can easily run all day, any phantasmal class metal will make a good melee weapon. Actually, the particular metal used in the staff was not only a good magical material but also very good for swords and the such.

"You're here," says the ever-cheerful Mariel, running up to me.

"And what kind of spell is that? You literally caused a lightning storm," Mariel asks.

"As you can see, I used almost all my mana in the process," I say.

"You really are a powerful sorcerer," she compliments.

"You should probably go back to healing," I point out.

She jumps a little, "Oh right!"

She's the grown up here, not me, why am I reminding her of things like that? Oh well. Seriously, she seems more like a kid to me than Minori.

I look out on the fighting and see lightning strike down fish after fish, my kill count must be pretty high. This is going to last another minute or two too, so who knows how many more of them will die in that time.

I take out a mana potion and chug it down, waiting for my mana to regenerate.

A few of the fish monsters were starting to notice me. That's a problem. I don't have any melee skills... but I've done kendo, so might as well try it.

I grab the tip of my staff and pull on it, unsheathing the sword in the staff. I got it made that way mostly for cool points, but seems like it might actually be useful.

I put the rest of the staff away, it wasn't the main magic part anyway, and get ready for the goblins.

As the rest one runs up I stab it through, as long as no high level ones come, I should be fine. And if a high level one comes, I'll just use some spells, I have some of my mana back now.

A level 75 one, huh. That will probably be too high level to deal with, with a sword, that is.

"Fireball," I say, pointing my sword at the fish. It light with fire and then fire flows to the tip of the blade, forming a fireball and launching at it.

The fish monster gets covered in fire and burned to ashes, promptly evaporating into bubbles of anima and psyche, the latter of which would later gather anima from the air and reincarnate, at least, that's the explanation for respawning given by Regan, Sage of Miral Lake and by Spirit Theory.

I kick one's weapon up into the air and run him through with a my sword—and not very kendo-like technique—and then cut my sword out of it to the side, cutting half way through it and instantly killing it. Blood only seemed to appear before they disperse when it was necessary for cool effect.

Crap, I'm surrounded by a lot of them, some of them pretty high level.

"Flaming Nova!" A spell that lights the casters body on fire and then causes a rather flat explosion of fire, it is a mage spell that can be used offensively to finish off a final group of enemies, but it is generally used in emergency thanks to the long 5 minute cooldown.

"Need a little help here!" I call out.

"Fireball!" I say as I swing my sword and... what? Instead of launching as a ball, the Fireball got stretched out and moved outwards as a line of fire that's part of an expanding circle, an arc about 45°.

"Anchor Howl!" yells Naotsugu, who happens to be somewhere nearby.

The goblins turn towards the guardian and I run through the gaps, escaping the encirclement I had foolishly gotten trapped in.

"Blizzard!" I target the tank with the spell as he would remain unaffected and while the fish would be resistant to most of the already small amount of damage from the spell, it would still slow them down.

The spell freezes the low level monsters that gathered around the tank in blocks of ice.

"Smash 'em," I call out.

A nearby bard uses an ability called Resonance Beat on the tank, who slams his shield into the ground causing the frozen fish to shatter, insta-killing the whole bunch.

"Thanks," I say, putting the tank between me and the fish.

"It's a guardian's job to protect their squishier allies!" the Naotsugu says.

"Is this storm your doing?" he asks.

"Yeah, but it won't kill them all, would be much more effective if they were smart enough to be scared," I say.

"I doubt they'd come at all right now then, because no matter how you look at it, a lot of them are going to die from fighting us, even if they win in the end," he says.

"You have a point there. Well, knowing that they're stupid enough to fight and that they'll respawn makes me not feel bad about wiping them out, I'd feel bad about killing even this many animals in the real world," I point out.

"Soul Drain!" I call out, pointing my sword at the sky. My sword starts to glow an erie green and blue lines come from all the surrounding fish to it.

I feel... more awake, I guess, as mana is restored. The spell has a very long cooldown, but its function is to drain mana from surrounding enemies, there is a fairly low maximum it can drain from a given enemy, so it works nice in a crowd of enemies like this.

The green glow fades and the blue lines disappear and I lower my sword.

I look at my mana and see that I had recovered a little under 8k mana, that worked better than expected.

"Flaming Armor!" I say, pointing to Naotsugu. Even sorcerers had buffs. It's actually a low level spell that functions similar to Purification Barrier blocking some amount of damage before it reaches the person, in other words, raw damage instead of damage they would have taken, an exception to this rule is fire damage, which is greatly reduced and water damage, which is quite increased. It also burns melee attackers. Visually, it looks like the subject is covered in fire, but not burning, this excludes the face. Basically Immolate that doesn't cover the face. At my level the damage prevented would be somewhere around ~4k, so if I use it on myself, it practically doubles my HP, since I have no armor to speak of. Of course, since sorcerer isn't supposed to be a buff class, the cooldown is pretty long. Its duration is about half an hour.

"Wow, cool," he says as he looks at his flaming armor.

"Just kill the dang things," I say.

One runs up behind me and I point my sword at it, casting Fireball... wait, don't you need to say it? I guess you don't. Then what do you need to do? Think it? I didn't consciously think 'Fireball' though, so maybe you need to want to cast that spell? Whatever.

Infernal Strike!

Hey, it worked.

I wonder if it works with custom spells, that would make casting them infinitely faster. Fire, Bolt, Fast, Weak, Damage.

I bolt of fire springs from my hand and streaks towards the fish I aim it, instantly killing it thanks to its low level.

Well, I wonder what I can do that obviously wouldn't be possible in the game, the cooking and stuff prove that it isn't like the game, so maybe there's something I can pull off with sorcerer stuffs. Something like constructing spells directly, not using the built in spell create or the base spells, just somehow making them from nothing. Channeling mana is already something that just comes naturally, so not that far fetched. Or maybe some sort of combination spells or casting multiple at the same time.

Meteor Rain! A spell which rains magma from the sky in globs, which sticks around for a little while. Normally, it would just affect any monsters that went inside the radius, however, this wasn't a game anymore... really, so the sand should melt into a patch of glass, which isn't very conductive.

I wait until the fish covers the glass area once more.

Steelfall! A spell which rains sharp metal rods from the sky, impaling a few of the fish, normally not all that effective but given that there was a lightning storm, and the rods weren't grounded... the lightning should jump form the rods and along chains of the fish to reach the edges of the field of glass, where it can discharge into the earth.

At least, that's how I think lightning works, who knows, I could be wrong.

Lightning strikes at the metal rods, jumping to the fish as expected and killing most of the fish in the field of glass once more. And they were too stupid to avoid the highly charged metal rods, which means they would just keep completing the circuit for me and dying.

"I can't hope to match your kill count at this rate..." the guardian says.

"You never had a chance anyway," I say, 'comforting' him.

"Not helping," he says.

"Wasn't trying to," I answer.

A loud shriek echoed in the distance, the sound of the Shrieker Echo druid spell, Serara had set them up around the place as alarms. The spell makes a low shriek when an enemy steps inside its radius, though generally used to disorient the enemy, it also works for this.

The party of bold trainees seems to be asking Mariel to go, though they obviously weren't the best choice. Nyanta seemed to be backing them up, and I'm sure Naotsugu would too, if he wasn't busy being my meat-shield. Thanks for that, by the way.

Oh, looks like two minutes are up.

Thanks to my mana potion combined with Soul Drain had brought me back up to 14k mana, time to spend most of it again.

The cooldown for Lightning Storm is two minutes, precisely its duration, meaning as long as you have the mana and Storm Call lasts, you can keep it up continuously, paying 10k mana every two minutes, which isn't really a sustainable rate, even with high class mana potions. Unless you want to spend a bunch of instant mana potions, which are rare and expensive in any decent quality.

"Lightning Storm!" With such a huge spell, it's more satisfying if you say it out-loud. My sword gets surrounded with the same blueish purple aura and electricity runs along it. Aaand I'm out of mana again, well, not out but down to about 10%.

A few minutes later Mariel calls out, "Reinforcements are coming in an hour, just hold out till then!"

* * *

This is tiring, but at least the reinforcements are here, in the form of a giant steamship full of high level Adventurers. Unfortunately, the sahuagin are making it hard for the ship to land. A bunch of landing boats deploy from the ship, I guess I'll go lie down or something while they finish these guys off, well, once they make land that is.

"Anchor Howl!" yells a guardian getting off one of the boats.

All the nearby fish turn towards him, allowing me to walk past them and off the beach without any hindrance.

I flop down on my back and just lie there. Apparently, while you don't get tired from running, basically at all, you do get tired from fighting. Especially if you're a sorcerer with almost no mana and fighting with a sword. Speaking of swords. I take the rest of the staff out of my bag and put the sword back into it, then put the whole thing away.

With the reinforcements of just under 500 adventurers, we were only outnumbered about 50:1, which meant that this would be over soon. As a point of reference, I had probably managed to kill nearly a thousand of the fish in an hour, so 50 per person would take a few minutes, even if they were worse crowd control classes, maybe tens of minutes.


End file.
